From a bird's eye view, my partner and I might have seemed like two black grains of sand stuck high on a slope among rocks, ice and snow. Our long route was coming to an end, and we were returning to camp, set up on a ridge sandwiched between the two largest ice sheets on the planet. Beneath the clear northern sky lay an expanse from the drifting ice of the Arctic in the east to the vast ice sheets of Greenland in the west. After a productive day and a long walk, we felt on top of the world when we saw this majestic sight.

However, suddenly the state of bliss came to an end, and all because the ground under my feet changed. We were crossing a strip of bedrock, and the brown sandstone gave way to a patch of pink limestone, which we knew was a sure sign that fossils might be found nearby. We had been looking at the boulders for several minutes when I noticed an unusual reflection coming from one of the melon-sized stones. My experience in the field taught me to listen to my inner voice. We came to Greenland to hunt for small fossils, so I got used to looking at rocks through a magnifying glass. It was a glittering white speck no larger than a sesame seed. I looked at the stone for a good five minutes, and then handed the find to Farish, my companion, to hear his authoritative opinion.

Farish froze, peering at the grain, and then looked at me with delight and amazement. Pulling off his gloves, he threw them high, about five meters, and squeezed me tightly in his arms.

Such an explosion of emotions distracted me from the absurdity of the situation: the discovery of a tooth the size of a grain of sand caused great delight! But we found what we had been looking for for three years, spending a lot of money, something that had repeatedly sprained ligaments in our legs: the missing link between reptiles and mammals, about two hundred million years old. Of course, our project was not limited to finding a single trophy. This little tooth is just one of the threads that connects us with antiquity. The Greenland rocks contain part of the forces that once shaped our bodies, our planet and even our Universe.

Finding connections with this ancient world is like discovering the original design in an optical illusion. We see people, stones and stars every day. But train your eyes - and familiar things will appear in front of you from an unusual perspective. If you learn to look at the world, then objects and stars will become for you a window into the past - so huge that it is almost beyond comprehension. In our common distant past, terrible disasters occurred, and they could not help but affect living beings.

How can a huge world be reflected in a small tooth or even in a human body?

I'll start by telling you how my colleagues and I first came to that mountain range in Greenland.

Imagine a valley stretching as far as the eye can see. And you're looking for fossils here the size of the period at the end of a sentence. The fossils and the vast valley are not comparable in size, but any valley will seem tiny in comparison with the surface of the Earth. Learning to look for traces of ancient life means learning to look at stones not as fixed objects, but as dynamic entities, often with an eventful history. This applies to our entire world and to our bodies, which are a “snapshot” capturing a specific moment in time.

Over the past century and a half, the tactics for opening sites for fossil hunting have changed little. In principle, there is nothing complicated here: we should find an area where stones of the age we are interested in lie on the surface, and those that are most likely to contain fossils. The less you have to dig, the better. This approach, which I described in my book Inner Fish, allowed me and my colleagues in 2004 to discover the remains of fish preparing to come to land.

As a student in the early 1980s, I joined a group that was developing new methods for finding fossils. Our task was to find the earliest relatives of mammals. Scientists found fossils of small shrew-like animals and their reptile relatives, but by the mid-1980s they had reached a dead end. The problem is best described by the famous joke: “For every missing link found, two new gaps are created in the fossil record.” My colleagues contributed to the creation of new gaps and were forced to fill them, including looking for rocks that were about two hundred million years old.

The discovery of new fossil sites was facilitated by economic and political developments: in search of sources of oil, gas and other minerals, many states stimulated the creation of geological maps. Therefore, almost any geological library has journal articles, reports and - which we always really count on! - maps of territories, regions and countries with a detailed description of the age, structure and mineral composition of rocks exposed on the surface. The challenge is to find the right card.

Professor Farish A. Jenkins, Jr. led the research group at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. Finding fossils is his bread and butter, or rather that of himself and his team, and they started their search in the library. Farish's colleagues from another laboratory, Chuck Schaff and Bill Eimeral, played a key role in this research. They used their extensive experience in geology to point out potential fossil sites and, importantly, trained themselves to spot small fossils on the ground. Chuck and Bill's work together often looked like a long, friendly discussion: one put forward a new hypothesis, and the other eagerly tried to refute it. If the hypothesis managed to survive, they brought it to the court of Farish, with his logic and scientific sense, for a final decision.

One day in 1986, during such a discussion, Bill saw on Chuck's desk a copy of the Shell reference book on Permian and Triassic sediments. Flipping through the pages, Bill came across a map of Greenland with a small shaded area of ​​Triassic sediments on the east coast, lying at 72 degrees north latitude, approximately the latitude of the northernmost cape of Alaska. After studying the map, Bill stated that this was the place where the search should begin. The usual discussion ensued: Chuck argued that the rocks here were not the same, and Bill objected to him.

A happy accident allowed the dispute to end right there, at the bookshelf. A few weeks earlier, Chuck had been rummaging through the library trash and pulled out a reprint of the article “A Review of the Triassic Stratigraphy of Scoresby Land and Jameson Land in East Greenland,” written by Danish geologists in the 70s. Few people could then imagine that this work, miraculously saved from waste paper, would determine our lives for ten years to come. The discussion ended literally the minute Bill and Chuck looked at the cards in the article.

The graduate student's room was just down the hall, and as often happened, I stopped by to see Chuck at the end of the day. Bill was spinning around right there, and it was clear that they had just been arguing as usual. Bill handed me a reprint of the article. This was exactly what we were looking for. On the east coast of Greenland, opposite Iceland, there were deposits containing the remains of early mammals, dinosaurs and other treasures.

The cards looked unusual, even frightening. The east coast of Greenland is remote and mountainous. The names of the places are associated with the names of travelers of the past: Jameson Land, Scoresby Land, Wegener Peninsula. And some of them, as I reliably knew, died there.

Fortunately, the chores fell on the shoulders of Farish, Bill and Chuck. With a combined sixty years of field work behind them, they have accumulated a wealth of knowledge about conducting expeditions in a wide variety of conditions. But what experience could prepare us for the journey ahead? An experienced expedition leader once told me: nothing compares to your first trip to the Arctic.

During my first expedition to Greenland, I learned a lot, which was useful to me eleven years later when I started my own expedition to the Arctic. That first time I took with me to the land of slush, ice and eternal day leaky leather boots, a small old tent and a giant lantern, and in general I made so many mistakes that I smiled only when I repeated the motto I had invented: “Never do anything.” do it for the first time."

The most unpleasant episode of that expedition was associated with the choice of a place for camp: the decision had to be made quickly, right when we were inspecting the area from a helicopter. While the engine is running, the money, figuratively speaking, goes down the drain: the cost of renting a helicopter in the Arctic for an hour can reach three thousand dollars. With a paleontological expedition budget more geared toward a beat-up pickup truck than a Bell 212 helicopter, that means there's not a minute to waste. Finding ourselves over a place that, when studying the maps in the laboratory, seemed suitable for us to park, we quickly noted the elements that were important to us. There are a lot of them. You need a dry, flat area, located close to a water source, but at some distance from the sea to avoid encounters with polar bears. The site should be sheltered from the wind and located close to the rock outcrops that we are going to explore.

We had a good idea of ​​the general layout of the area, having studied maps and aerial photographs, and so we found a wonderful little patch of tundra in the center of a wide valley. There were small channels here from which water could be taken. The place was dry and level, so we could easily set up our tents. In addition, from here there was a magnificent view of the ridge of snow-capped mountains and the glacier at the eastern end of the valley. But we soon realized our main mistake: there were no necessary rocks within walking distance.

After the camp was set up, we went out every day in search of stones. We climbed to the highest points of the area around the camp and tried to see through binoculars at least one of those rocky outcrops that literally caught our eye on the maps in the article that Bill and Chuck found. We were also guided by the fact that the stones - red sandstone - should have a characteristic color.

In search of red rocks, we left camp in pairs: Chuck and Farish climbed the hills to look for red rocks to the south, while Bill and I tried to see what was to the north. On the third day, both teams returned with the same news. About ten kilometers to the northeast a narrow reddish strip was visible. We spent the rest of the week discussing this exit and looking at it through binoculars. Sometimes, in the right light, it appeared to be a series of ridges, ideal for finding fossils.

It was decided that Bill and I would go to the stones. Since I had no idea what roads were like in the Arctic, I chose the wrong boots, and the trek turned out to be an ordeal: first we crossed fields of cobblestones, then small glaciers... but mostly we walked on mud. The liquid clay squelched obscenely every time we pulled our leg out of it. We left no traces.

For three days we searched for the road, but in the end we were able to find a reliable path to the desired stones. After a four-hour trek, the reddish strip visible from the camp through binoculars turned into a series of rocks, ridges and hills, consisting of the very stones we were looking for. If we're lucky, there might be fossils on the surface.

Now the task was to return here as quickly as possible with Farish and Chuck, reducing the transition time and saving maximum time for searching for fossils. When we returned as a team, Bill and I felt so proud, as if we were showing our guests a new home. Farish and Chuck, tired from the trek but excited by the anticipation of the search, did not even start the usual discussion. They methodically scanned the soil with their gaze.

Bill and I headed to a ridge about a kilometer away to see what awaited us further north. After a break, Bill began to look around in search of something interesting: our colleagues, bears or any other manifestations of life. Finally he said, “Chuck is down.” Taking out the binoculars, I actually saw Chuck crawling on all fours. To a paleontologist, this means only one thing: fossils.

We quickly walked there. Chuck actually found a piece of bone. However, our one-way hike lasted four hours, and now we were forced to return. Farish, Bill, Chuck and I were stretched out in a line about ten meters apart from each other. About five hundred meters later I saw something on the ground. This “something” shone with a familiar shine. Kneeling down as Chuck had done an hour ago, I saw it in all its glory: a wonderful piece of bone the size of a fist. There were other bones on the left, and more and more on the right. I called out to Farish, Bill and Chuck. There was no answer. I looked around and realized why: they were also on all fours. We found ourselves in a field strewn with broken bones.

At the end of the summer we returned to the laboratory with boxes of fossils, which Bill began to assemble like a three-dimensional puzzle. They were the bones of a creature about six meters long, with a row of flat, leaf-shaped teeth, a long neck and a small head. Judging by the anatomy of the limbs, it was a dinosaur, although not the largest.

Dinosaurs of this type, prosauropods, occupy an important place among paleontological finds in North America. In the eastern part of the continent, dinosaurs used to be found along rivers, highways and railways, that is, in places where rocks end up on the surface. The famous paleontologist Richard Swann Lull (1867-1957) of Yale University discovered the prosauropod in the quarries of Manchester, Connecticut. True, the stone block contained only the back part of the animal’s body. The saddened scientist learned that the block with the front section was included in the support of the bridge in South Manchester. Lull described only the back of the dinosaur. Only when the bridge was dismantled in 1969 were the remaining fragments also freed. Who knows what fossils are hidden in the depths of Manhattan? After all, the famous brown houses on the island are built from the same stones.

The hills of Greenland are formed by wide stone steps that not only tear up your boots, but can also tell you a lot about the origin of the stones. Hard layers of sandstone, almost as strong as concrete, emerge from beneath softer, brittle layers. Almost the same steps exist in the south: layers of sandstone, silt and shale stretch from North Carolina and Connecticut all the way to Greenland. These layers contain characteristic faults filled with sedimentary rocks. They indicate the location of ancient lakes in deep valleys that arose when the earth's crust cracked. The arrangement of ancient faults, volcanoes and lake sediments in these layers is almost the same as in the lakes of the modern East African Rift Valley (Victoria and Malawi): movement in the bowels of the Earth led to the splitting of areas of the surface, and rivers and lakes appeared in the resulting gaps. In the past, such rift chasms stretched along the coast of North America.

Our plan from the beginning was to search along these cracks. Knowing that fossils of dinosaurs and small creatures close to mammals can be found in the rocks of eastern North America allowed us to appreciate the significance of that reprint of a geological paper that Chuck discovered. This in turn led us to northern Greenland. Then, already in Greenland, we continued to follow the same thread for finds, like pigeons mincing for crumbs of bread. The work took three years, but the clues we found in the redflowers eventually led Farish and me to that icy ridge.

From the top of the ridge our tents looked tiny. The wind was rustling overhead, but the ledge of pink limestone on which Farish and I were sitting provided shelter, so we could easily see the find. Farish's jubilation confirmed my suspicion that the white speck on the stone was indeed a mammal tooth. Three tubercles and two roots: this is exactly how it should look.

Encouraged by the find, we expanded our search to East Greenland and found other mammal remains in subsequent years. It was a small, shrew-like animal half the size of a house mouse. It may not have been an amazing skeleton that deserved a special place in the museum, but its value lay elsewhere.

This was the skeleton of one of the earliest fossil creatures with our type of teeth: their cutting surface is formed by tubercles that meet at the junction of the upper and lower teeth, and the row is divided into incisors, canines and molars. The animal's ear also resembles ours and contains small bones that connect the eardrum to the inner ear. The shape of its skull, shoulders and limbs is also like that of mammals. It is likely that the animal had fur and other mammalian characteristics, such as mammary glands. When we chew, hear high-pitched sounds, or move our hands, we use parts of the skeleton that can be traced back to primates and other mammals back to the original structures of these small creatures that lived two hundred million years ago.

Stones also connect us with the past. Cracks in the earth - like the ones that led us to the fossilized remains of mammals in Greenland - have left their mark on our bodies. Greenland rocks are one page in a huge library that contains the history of our world. Before this little tooth appeared, the world had existed for billions of years, and two hundred million years have passed since its appearance. During this time, oceans appeared and disappeared on Earth, mountains rose and collapsed, and asteroids fell on Earth as it made its way through the solar system. Rock layers record changes in climate, atmosphere and crust over millions of years. Change is the normal order of things: bodies grow and die, species appear and disappear, every element and sign of our planet and Galaxy is subject to both sudden transformations and gradual changes.

Stones and bodies are “time capsules”, bearing the imprint of the great events that formed them. The molecules that make up our bodies arose as a result of cosmic events at the dawn of the solar system. Changes in the Earth's atmosphere have shaped our cells and our entire metabolism. Changes in the planet's orbit, the appearance of mountains and other revolutionary changes on the Earth itself - all this was reflected in our bodies, in our brains and in our perception of the world around us.

Like the life and history of our bodies, this book is structured along a timeline. Our story begins approximately 13.7 billion years ago, when the Big Bang created the Universe. Then we'll explore the history of our humble corner of the Universe and see what consequences the formation of the solar system, Earth and Moon had on our organs, cells and the genes they contain.

From a bird's eye view, my partner and I might have seemed like two black grains of sand stuck high on a slope among rocks, ice and snow. Our long route was coming to an end, and we were returning to camp, set up on a ridge sandwiched between the two largest ice sheets on the planet. Beneath the clear northern sky lay an expanse from the drifting ice of the Arctic in the east to the vast ice sheets of Greenland in the west. After a productive day and a long walk, we felt on top of the world when we saw this majestic sight.

However, suddenly the state of bliss came to an end, and all because the ground under my feet changed. We were crossing a strip of bedrock, and the brown sandstone gave way to a patch of pink limestone, which we knew was a sure sign that fossils might be found nearby. We had been looking at the boulders for several minutes when I noticed an unusual reflection coming from one of the melon-sized stones. My experience in the field taught me to listen to my inner voice. We came to Greenland to hunt for small fossils, so I got used to looking at rocks through a magnifying glass. It was a glittering white speck no larger than a sesame seed. I looked at the stone for a good five minutes, and then handed the find to Farish, my companion, to hear his authoritative opinion.

Farish froze, peering at the grain, and then looked at me with delight and amazement. Pulling off his gloves, he threw them high, about five meters, and squeezed me tightly in his arms.

Such an explosion of emotions distracted me from the absurdity of the situation: the discovery of a tooth the size of a grain of sand caused great delight! But we found what we had been looking for for three years, spending a lot of money, something that had repeatedly sprained ligaments in our legs: the missing link between reptiles and mammals, about two hundred million years old. Of course, our project was not limited to finding a single trophy. This little tooth is just one of the threads that connects us with antiquity. The Greenland rocks contain part of the forces that once shaped our bodies, our planet and even our Universe.

Finding connections with this ancient world is like discovering the original design in an optical illusion. We see people, stones and stars every day. But train your eyes - and familiar things will appear in front of you from an unusual perspective. If you learn to look at the world, then objects and stars will become for you a window into the past - so huge that it is almost beyond comprehension. In our common distant past, terrible disasters occurred, and they could not help but affect living beings.

How can a huge world be reflected in a small tooth or even in a human body?

I'll start by telling you how my colleagues and I first came to that mountain range in Greenland.

Imagine a valley stretching as far as the eye can see. And you're looking for fossils here the size of the period at the end of a sentence. The fossils and the vast valley are not comparable in size, but any valley will seem tiny in comparison with the surface of the Earth. Learning to look for traces of ancient life means learning to look at stones not as fixed objects, but as dynamic entities, often with an eventful history. This applies to our entire world and to our bodies, which are a “snapshot” capturing a specific moment in time.

Over the past century and a half, the tactics for opening sites for fossil hunting have changed little. In principle, there is nothing complicated here: we should find an area where stones of the age we are interested in lie on the surface, and those that are most likely to contain fossils. The less you have to dig, the better. This approach, which I described in my book Inner Fish, allowed me and my colleagues in 2004 to discover the remains of fish preparing to come to land.

As a student in the early 1980s, I joined a group that was developing new methods for finding fossils. Our task was to find the earliest relatives of mammals. Scientists found fossils of small shrew-like animals and their reptile relatives, but by the mid-1980s they had reached a dead end. The problem is best described by the famous joke: “For every missing link found, two new gaps are created in the fossil record.” My colleagues contributed to the creation of new gaps and were forced to fill them, including looking for rocks that were about two hundred million years old.

The discovery of new fossil sites was facilitated by economic and political developments: in search of sources of oil, gas and other minerals, many states stimulated the creation of geological maps. Therefore, almost any geological library has journal articles, reports and - which we always really count on! - maps of territories, regions and countries with a detailed description of the age, structure and mineral composition of rocks exposed on the surface. The challenge is to find the right card.

Professor Farish A. Jenkins, Jr. led the research group at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. Finding fossils is his bread and butter, or rather that of himself and his team, and they started their search in the library. Farish's colleagues from another laboratory, Chuck Schaff and Bill Eimeral, played a key role in this research. They used their extensive experience in geology to point out potential fossil sites and, importantly, trained themselves to spot small fossils on the ground. Chuck and Bill's work together often looked like a long, friendly discussion: one put forward a new hypothesis, and the other eagerly tried to refute it. If the hypothesis managed to survive, they brought it to the court of Farish, with his logic and scientific sense, for a final decision.

One day in 1986, during such a discussion, Bill saw on Chuck's desk a copy of the Shell reference book on Permian and Triassic sediments. Flipping through the pages, Bill came across a map of Greenland with a small shaded area of ​​Triassic sediments on the east coast, lying at 72 degrees north latitude, approximately the latitude of the northernmost cape of Alaska. After studying the map, Bill stated that this was the place where the search should begin. The usual discussion ensued: Chuck argued that the rocks here were not the same, and Bill objected to him.

A happy accident allowed the dispute to end right there, at the bookshelf. A few weeks earlier, Chuck had been rummaging through the library trash and pulled out a reprint of the article “A Review of the Triassic Stratigraphy of Scoresby Land and Jameson Land in East Greenland,” written by Danish geologists in the 70s. Few people could then imagine that this work, miraculously saved from waste paper, would determine our lives for ten years to come. The discussion ended literally the minute Bill and Chuck looked at the cards in the article.

The graduate student's room was just down the hall, and as often happened, I stopped by to see Chuck at the end of the day. Bill was spinning around right there, and it was clear that they had just been arguing as usual. Bill handed me a reprint of the article. This was exactly what we were looking for. On the east coast of Greenland, opposite Iceland, there were deposits containing the remains of early mammals, dinosaurs and other treasures.

The cards looked unusual, even frightening. The east coast of Greenland is remote and mountainous. The names of the places are associated with the names of travelers of the past: Jameson Land, Scoresby Land, Wegener Peninsula. And some of them, as I reliably knew, died there.

Fortunately, the chores fell on the shoulders of Farish, Bill and Chuck. With a combined sixty years of field work behind them, they have accumulated a wealth of knowledge about conducting expeditions in a wide variety of conditions. But what experience could prepare us for the journey ahead? An experienced expedition leader once told me: nothing compares to your first trip to the Arctic.

During my first expedition to Greenland, I learned a lot, which was useful to me eleven years later when I started my own expedition to the Arctic. That first time I took with me to the land of slush, ice and eternal day leaky leather boots, a small old tent and a giant lantern, and in general I made so many mistakes that I smiled only when I repeated the motto I had invented: “Never do anything.” do it for the first time."

The most unpleasant episode of that expedition was associated with the choice of a place for camp: the decision had to be made quickly, right when we were inspecting the area from a helicopter. While the engine is running, the money, figuratively speaking, goes down the drain: the cost of renting a helicopter in the Arctic for an hour can reach three thousand dollars. With a paleontological expedition budget more geared toward a beat-up pickup truck than a Bell 212 helicopter, that means there's not a minute to waste. Finding ourselves over a place that, when studying the maps in the laboratory, seemed suitable for us to park, we quickly noted the elements that were important to us. There are a lot of them. You need a dry, flat area, located close to a water source, but at some distance from the sea to avoid encounters with polar bears. The site should be sheltered from the wind and located close to the rock outcrops that we are going to explore.

We had a good idea of ​​the general layout of the area, having studied maps and aerial photographs, and so we found a wonderful little patch of tundra in the center of a wide valley. There were small channels here from which water could be taken. The place was dry and level, so we could easily set up our tents. In addition, from here there was a magnificent view of the ridge of snow-capped mountains and the glacier at the eastern end of the valley. But we soon realized our main mistake: there were no necessary rocks within walking distance.

After the camp was set up, we went out every day in search of stones. We climbed to the highest points of the area around the camp and tried to see through binoculars at least one of those rocky outcrops that literally caught our eye on the maps in the article that Bill and Chuck found. We were also guided by the fact that the stones - red sandstone - should have a characteristic color.

In search of red rocks, we left camp in pairs: Chuck and Farish climbed the hills to look for red rocks to the south, while Bill and I tried to see what was to the north. On the third day, both teams returned with the same news. About ten kilometers to the northeast a narrow reddish strip was visible. We spent the rest of the week discussing this exit and looking at it through binoculars. Sometimes, in the right light, it appeared to be a series of ridges, ideal for finding fossils.

It was decided that Bill and I would go to the stones. Since I had no idea what roads were like in the Arctic, I chose the wrong boots, and the trek turned out to be an ordeal: first we crossed fields of cobblestones, then small glaciers... but mostly we walked on mud. The liquid clay squelched obscenely every time we pulled our leg out of it. We left no traces.

For three days we searched for the road, but in the end we were able to find a reliable path to the desired stones. After a four-hour trek, the reddish strip visible from the camp through binoculars turned into a series of rocks, ridges and hills, consisting of the very stones we were looking for. If we're lucky, there might be fossils on the surface.

Now the task was to return here as quickly as possible with Farish and Chuck, reducing the transition time and saving maximum time for searching for fossils. When we returned as a team, Bill and I felt so proud, as if we were showing our guests a new home. Farish and Chuck, tired from the trek but excited by the anticipation of the search, did not even start the usual discussion. They methodically scanned the soil with their gaze.

Bill and I headed to a ridge about a kilometer away to see what awaited us further north. After a break, Bill began to look around in search of something interesting: our colleagues, bears or any other manifestations of life. Finally he said, “Chuck is down.” Taking out the binoculars, I actually saw Chuck crawling on all fours. To a paleontologist, this means only one thing: fossils.

We quickly walked there. Chuck actually found a piece of bone. However, our one-way hike lasted four hours, and now we were forced to return. Farish, Bill, Chuck and I were stretched out in a line about ten meters apart from each other. About five hundred meters later I saw something on the ground. This “something” shone with a familiar shine. Kneeling down as Chuck had done an hour ago, I saw it in all its glory: a wonderful piece of bone the size of a fist. There were other bones on the left, and more and more on the right. I called out to Farish, Bill and Chuck. There was no answer. I looked around and realized why: they were also on all fours. We found ourselves in a field strewn with broken bones.

At the end of the summer we returned to the laboratory with boxes of fossils, which Bill began to assemble like a three-dimensional puzzle. They were the bones of a creature about six meters long, with a row of flat, leaf-shaped teeth, a long neck and a small head. Judging by the anatomy of the limbs, it was a dinosaur, although not the largest.

Dinosaurs of this type, prosauropods, occupy an important place among paleontological finds in North America. In the eastern part of the continent, dinosaurs used to be found along rivers, highways and railways, that is, in places where rocks end up on the surface. The famous paleontologist Richard Swann Lull (1867-1957) of Yale University discovered the prosauropod in the quarries of Manchester, Connecticut. True, the stone block contained only the back part of the animal’s body. The saddened scientist learned that the block with the front section was included in the support of the bridge in South Manchester. Lull described only the back of the dinosaur. Only when the bridge was dismantled in 1969 were the remaining fragments also freed. Who knows what fossils are hidden in the depths of Manhattan? After all, the famous brown houses on the island are built from the same stones.

The hills of Greenland are formed by wide stone steps that not only tear up your boots, but can also tell you a lot about the origin of the stones. Hard layers of sandstone, almost as strong as concrete, emerge from beneath softer, brittle layers. Almost the same steps exist in the south: layers of sandstone, silt and shale stretch from North Carolina and Connecticut all the way to Greenland. These layers contain characteristic faults filled with sedimentary rocks. They indicate the location of ancient lakes in deep valleys that arose when the earth's crust cracked. The arrangement of ancient faults, volcanoes and lake sediments in these layers is almost the same as in the lakes of the modern East African Rift Valley (Victoria and Malawi): movement in the bowels of the Earth led to the splitting of areas of the surface, and rivers and lakes appeared in the resulting gaps. In the past, such rift chasms stretched along the coast of North America.

Our plan from the beginning was to search along these cracks. Knowing that fossils of dinosaurs and small creatures close to mammals can be found in the rocks of eastern North America allowed us to appreciate the significance of that reprint of a geological paper that Chuck discovered. This in turn led us to northern Greenland. Then, already in Greenland, we continued to follow the same thread for finds, like pigeons mincing for crumbs of bread. The work took three years, but the clues we found in the redflowers eventually led Farish and me to that icy ridge.

From the top of the ridge our tents looked tiny. The wind was rustling overhead, but the ledge of pink limestone on which Farish and I were sitting provided shelter, so we could easily see the find. Farish's jubilation confirmed my suspicion that the white speck on the stone was indeed a mammal tooth. Three tubercles and two roots: this is exactly how it should look.

Encouraged by the find, we expanded our search to East Greenland and found other mammal remains in subsequent years. It was a small, shrew-like animal half the size of a house mouse. It may not have been an amazing skeleton that deserved a special place in the museum, but its value lay elsewhere.

This was the skeleton of one of the earliest fossil creatures with our type of teeth: their cutting surface is formed by tubercles that meet at the junction of the upper and lower teeth, and the row is divided into incisors, canines and molars. The animal's ear also resembles ours and contains small bones that connect the eardrum to the inner ear. The shape of its skull, shoulders and limbs is also like that of mammals. It is likely that the animal had fur and other mammalian characteristics, such as mammary glands. When we chew, hear high-pitched sounds, or move our hands, we use parts of the skeleton that can be traced back to primates and other mammals back to the original structures of these small creatures that lived two hundred million years ago.

Stones also connect us with the past. Cracks in the earth - like the ones that led us to the fossilized remains of mammals in Greenland - have left their mark on our bodies. Greenland rocks are one page in a huge library that contains the history of our world. Before this little tooth appeared, the world had existed for billions of years, and two hundred million years have passed since its appearance. During this time, oceans appeared and disappeared on Earth, mountains rose and collapsed, and asteroids fell on Earth as it made its way through the solar system. Rock layers record changes in climate, atmosphere and crust over millions of years. Change is the normal order of things: bodies grow and die, species appear and disappear, every element and sign of our planet and Galaxy is subject to both sudden transformations and gradual changes.

Stones and bodies are “time capsules”, bearing the imprint of the great events that formed them. The molecules that make up our bodies arose as a result of cosmic events at the dawn of the solar system. Changes in the Earth's atmosphere have shaped our cells and our entire metabolism. Changes in the planet's orbit, the appearance of mountains and other revolutionary changes on the Earth itself - all this was reflected in our bodies, in our brains and in our perception of the world around us.

Like the life and history of our bodies, this book is structured along a timeline. Our story begins approximately 13.7 billion years ago, when the Big Bang created the Universe. Then we'll explore the history of our humble corner of the Universe and see what consequences the formation of the solar system, Earth and Moon had on our organs, cells and the genes they contain.

The universe is within us. How to maintain yourself in the modern world Rajneesh Bhagwan Shri

Chapter 13 Child of the Universe

Child of the Universe

While following a useful discipline, be kind to yourself. You are a child of the Universe no less than the trees and stars; you have a right to be here. And whether it is clear to you or not, the Universe is undoubtedly developing as it should.

Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you imagine him to be. And whatever your works and aspirations in the noisy bustle of life, keep calm in your soul.

With all its deceptions, hard work and broken dreams, it is still a wonderful world. Be cheerful. Strive for happiness.

We have come to a wonderful end to our journey. These are the last sutras Desiderat. Every word in these sutras carries great potential. Each word is filled with multidimensional meaning; therefore one should meditate on them. Follow each word slowly.

What is a useful discipline? The word "discipline" ( discipline) comes from the same root as the word "disciple" ( disciple). It means learning. Remember: the word “training” ( learning) is formed from a verb, it is not a noun. It does not mean knowledge, it means a constant process of learning. Knowledge is dead, you can accumulate it. Even a computer can have knowledge, but a computer cannot learn, cannot be a student. A computer can only reproduce whatever has been input into it; it happens mechanically.

Knowledge is a mechanical accumulation; cognition is a conscious process. This process is like a river, always moving from the known to the unknown, always ready to explore. Knowledge stops, learning never stops.

For example, Socrates... Here is an example of a man of knowledge. Even at the moment of death he continues to study. When he was given poison, his disciples began to cry and sob. He said: “Don't miss the opportunity to learn something about death. This is one of the greatest events in life, in fact, greatest event because it is a culmination, a crescendo, a high point. Wait, watch: meditate... on what is happening to me.”

That's exactly what he did. The rest cried and sobbed; they were not in a state of exploration - as if they knew what death was. No one knows what death is, although you have all died many times; you still do not know what death is because you have missed the opportunity to learn, you have not been alert enough to learn. And again and again you died, again and again you missed this opportunity. You again missed this opportunity because you continued to think that you know what death is. You don't even know what life is; how can you know what death is?

One day a man came to me and asked:

– What happens after death?

- Forget it! - I said. – First try to find out what’s going on before of death. Did you recognize this? Do you know what life is?

“I don’t know,” he answered.

I said:

“You are alive, and you don’t know what life is, how can you know what death is?” You will only know this when you die. But if you don’t know what life is, then you will miss this opportunity in the same way.

Socrates remained vigilant until the very last moment. He continued to tell his students what was happening to him until the very last moment. He studied, he taught.

A true master is always a student. A true master is always learning. He never claims to have knowledge; in fact, he claims to be in agnosia, in a state of ignorance. This is exactly what Dionysius calls it - “a state of ignorance.” Socrates said: “I know only one thing: that I know nothing.” This is agnosia.

You must always remain in the state of not knowing; you must not allow yourself to become knowledgeable. As soon as you become knowledgeable, the process of learning stops, you put an end to it.

Socrates said to his disciples: “Listen, you can weep and cry later; right now it's not very significant. Something extremely important is happening right now. My feet are going numb, they are dying, but strangely, even though they are dying, I don’t feel like I’m dying.” He then continued: “My legs are completely numb, I can’t feel them. They are dead, but I am still whole - nothing is lost. As for my consciousness, it is not at all affected by death.” After that he said: “My hands are going numb.” Then he said: “Even now - I am afraid that at any moment my heart may stop; it weakens. But I am still as complete as I always was, so one thing is certain: with the death of the body, a person does not die. The body dies, but not the consciousness - my consciousness is still clear.”

The last thing he said was: “My tongue goes numb and I can no longer speak, but remember: even now, I am still as whole as I always was. Nothing in me died. Something has died around me, on the periphery, but in contrast, the center is, in fact, more alive than ever. I feel more alive because the body has died and all life has been concentrated in something else. She disappeared from the body, from the periphery. She focused on a single point - “I”.

And these were his last words. It's a learning process.

A knowledgeable person is always a stupid person, he is unreasonable. You will not find intelligent pandits. They cannot be intelligent, they already know everything - the learning process stopped long, long before that. Professors are almost always stupid people. It is very rare to find a professor who is still studying. They stopped studying the day they graduated from universities, the day they received their degrees. The day they became Masters of Arts, or Doctors of Philosophy, or Doctors of Letters, they died.

The Taoists in China have a saying that says that a person dies at about the age of thirty - the only question is when he will be buried. He may be buried in thirty years, in forty years, in fifty years - that’s another matter, but as far as life is concerned, a person dies somewhere around thirty.

This saying is undoubtedly true. In fact, psychologists say that the average mental age of a person is only twelve years. This means that the mind dies, stops functioning, at the age of twelve - not even at thirty. This is why people continue to behave childishly.

And remember: being like a child is completely different from being infantile. To be infantile is ugly; to be like a child is to be a wise man. To be like a child means to be in a state of agnosia, of learning. To be infantile means you already know. Only an infantile person believes that he already knows everything, that there is nothing more to learn.

The more stupid you are, the sooner you become knowledgeable. The more intelligent you are, the more difficult it is for you to become knowledgeable - because to become knowledgeable means that you have come to the very end of your intelligence. You are finished, you are exhausted.

This is the first meaning of "useful discipline." Your priests, your imams, your priests, your shankaracharya- they are all dead. They parrot the scriptures, but if you look a little deeper into them you will find nothing, you will find only rubbish. You will find that they are just as ordinary as everyone else. The only difference is that their ego is inflated from borrowed knowledge.

The one who learns never depends on borrowed knowledge. He himself tries to experience life, love, death - everything. He tries to explore every opportunity. He never misses an opportunity, he never misses a single challenge of life. He takes risks, he accepts any challenge, he welcomes it. And whenever the unknown calls to him, he is ready - ready to move, to take a leap, to go into the unknown, to go to places not mapped, to go into the immeasurable, into the incomprehensible. This requires courage.

And vice versa - it is very easy to become knowledgeable; it costs nothing. This does not require courage; any coward can become knowledgeable. But knowledge only penetrates skin deep... if it penetrates at all.

A wealthy jazz musician decided to go to church one Sunday morning. Very inspired by the sermon, he approached the preacher after the service.

“Reverend,” he said, “that was an amazing sermon.” Dude, I wasn’t put in like a child... it was complete garbage!

“I’m happy that you liked her,” answered the priest, “but I would like you to talk about your feelings not in such terms.”

– I’m, like, sorry, dude... Reverend, but I really got into this sermon! – the jazzman continued. - Just think, I was so fucked up that I slobbered a hundred bucks into a begging jar!

- Cool, dude, cool! - answered the priest.

Only to the depth of the skin! Scratch a little and you won't notice much of a difference. There is no difference; the difference in quantity does not matter. More precisely, there is a difference, but it is only a matter of quantity - you know less, they know more - but it is a matter of quantity. And a quantitative difference is not really a difference—it is not the difference that makes the difference. The quality remains the same; you are moving along the same path. The difference between a rich man and a poor man is not one of quality; the difference is whether a person has less or more money. The same is true for an ignorant person and a knowledgeable person.

The real difference takes place when a buddha is nearby; then you understand the difference in quality. Buddha exists on a completely different level.

That's what I heard.

Hillary was one step away from completing his historic ascent. And at that moment, when he was ready to step onto the virgin summit of the highest mountain peak on Earth, he suddenly saw in front of him a Hindu monk squatting in the snow. Hillary was so amazed that he was speechless. And the Hindu monk, taking advantage of the opportunity, asked:

– How much do you want for your watch?

While following a useful discipline, be kind to yourself.

Discipline is useful only when it comes not from the mind, but from meditation. The mind is only a small part of you: whatever comes from the mind will remain fragmentary. And we live in our minds. Mind means knowledge - borrowed, accumulated, not experienced. Experience happens only when you go into something totally, not just mentally.

You may know a lot about love. There are thousands of books about love in libraries, but this way you will not know love. To know love, you must be in love.

Knowledge of love is not knowledge of love. Knowledge about God is not knowledge of God. Knowing about God will make you a great theologian, but not a mystic. You will not be Christ, or Buddha, or Lao Tzu, or Zarathustra. You will be just a pandit who has learned to quote the Bhagavad Gita, the Koran, the Bible, the Dhammapada, the Talmud; but the pandit knows nothing. He has not tasted God, he has not yet become intoxicated with the divine.

The mind is a very small fragment of your wholeness; its function is to know about something. If you really want to know something, and not just learn about... Remember: "about" ( about) means the same as "around" ( around), and therefore “to know about something” is the same as “beating around the bush.” Man walks in circles, but never reaches the center, and the most important thing is in the center. It is the center that is essential.

A person like Ramakrishna is absolutely ignorant. You can even call him ignorant - ignorant in the sense that he is not a scientist, he cannot quote scriptures. But he has no need to quote scriptures. He knows God, he doesn't need to know God through anyone. He knows God because he knows through his wholeness; it is connected with Existence through its integrity.

Discipline is useful, healthy, organic, not when only one part of you follows it, but when you are intensely, passionately, completely involved in something. You cannot love through the mind; in order to love you must enter the world no-mind. This is exactly what meditation is.

True learning occurs through meditation. Meditation means letting go of the past and exploring the present, establishing direct contact with Now And Here because God is now, God is here. God is always now and always here. The mind lives in the past because it lives in knowledge. Knowledge is what you have learned, understood, learned. Existence happens Now, and the mind remains in Then; Existence - Here, and the mind is always there. The mind looks back; it is like a rearview mirror. If you are backing your car, then the rearview mirror is useful, but if you are driving forward, then continuing to look at the rearview mirror is dangerous. If you fixate on the rearview mirror, you are doomed to get into an accident. You are in great danger, you are suicidal. Life is always moving forward; she cannot move backwards.

When the first Ford car was built, it did not have a reverse gear. Life is just like that. Reverse gear was added later, when some experience had been accumulated, because before that, if you wanted to return home, you had to make a circle of several miles. Then the thought arose that it would be better... Even if you moved only a few feet from your house, you could not go back, you had to go a long way. Sometimes you had to drive around the entire city in order to get back. Then reverse gear was added.

But God hasn't added any reverse gear yet. There's really no need to move backwards. The past disappears - there is no past. It leaves traces only in your memory, it does not exist anywhere else. Existence is always “now”; the past is only memory, and the future is only imagination. There is no future, no past. What exists is the only reality, and the mind does not allow you to be in contact with it. How can you learn, how can you gain experience? Your experience cannot be useful, healthy. He will be sick, he will be unhealthy. And this turned every person almost into a monster.

The Desiderata says: “While following a useful discipline, be nevertheless kind to yourself...” It is because of this unhealthy, harmful state of affairs that the word “discipline” has become very misunderstood. It has become almost synonymous with control, and control means suppression. Suppression is not a way of learning, suppression is a way of avoiding. A person who represses sex avoids sex - he will never understand it. And what is suppressed will certainly take its toll, because it is not finished with, it remains inside. Until you have experienced something, you cannot go beyond it, you cannot transcend it. The only way to transcend anything is to go through it without suppressing, without bypassing, without ignoring. What has not been lived will return, and will return in abundance; one day it will explode. Yes, you may win small battles, but you will lose the main war. You will lose the competition—eventually. Now, at this time, you may be fooling yourself into thinking that you have succeeded.

Suppression cannot lead to success, because what has not been lived, what has not been experienced, remains inside you, in the subconscious. In fact, it penetrates even deeper into the subconscious and begins to grow there like a cancer.

Until now, there has been a lot of control in human life; that's why humanity suffers. Everyone is unhappy, everyone feels sadness, tension; everyone is depressed, everyone is in some strange state - constantly falling apart, falling apart. It seems that life is just a struggle to somehow survive, not something to enjoy, not a reason to dance, not a song, not a celebration - just a burden. You are content with the fact that you somehow manage to keep yourself from falling apart.

Why did this happen? Why has humanity become so sad? Trees are not sad, animals are not sad, even stones are not sad. All Existence, except man, is constantly celebrating. This is a constant dance, a song. It's a constant "Hallelujah!" - endless celebration, rejoicing. What happened to humanity, what went wrong?

The responsibility falls on the so-called religious people. They taught humanity only one way, and the wrong one: the way of suppression - suppress yourself, control yourself.

Mahatma Gandhi spoke... and his followers quote him as if he had said something very significant. He told his followers: “Be kind to others, but never be kind to yourself. Be harsh to yourself, otherwise you will lose this battle."

What does he mean by being hard on ourselves? Control, suppression. All his life he had suppressed so many things, and they all eventually declared themselves - they came to the surface. He repressed his sexuality and then, at the age of seventy, discovered that what he was doing was not successful. His sexuality went deeper, it took root in the subconscious part of his being.

And in the last stage of his life he began experimenting with Tantra. His followers do not mention this stage at all; they bypass it. They don't want to say anything about it, they don't write anything about it. He began sleeping with a naked young woman simply to bring to the surface what he had been continuously repressing for forty to fifty years. Now he wanted to bring it to the surface to see what had happened. For him, a man who had suppressed all his life and who had been against Tantra all his life, everything had been turned upside down.

You will be surprised to know that it was he who urged the Government of India to fill temples like Khajuraho with earth; cover them with dirt so that no one can see them... “Of course, do not destroy them, but let them be covered with earth. If anyone wants to explore them, they can be opened - but only for this purpose; there is no need for them for anything else.” He was so afraid of the nude statues in Khajuraho that he eventually started sleeping with a young naked woman. This shows what happens to a suppressive person. At the last stage, when all the time was wasted, when all his strength was exhausted, repressed sexuality began to assert itself.

He was a sincere man, but he was a total failure when it came to spiritual growth. He succeeded as a politician, very successful. He was one of the most successful politicians in the world, but he failed spiritually. Yes, he was a sincere person - you have to give him credit - he was a very sincere person. He admitted: “Sex still creeps into my dreams. I still see naked women in my dreams."

But the suppressive person has a completely different logic. Instead of trying to understand the message contained in the dreams, realizing that it was a message from the subconscious... He never read Sigmund Freud, he must have avoided Sigmund Freud. How can a man who wanted the Khajuraho temple to be buried study Sigmund Freud? After all, he unearthed the temples of Khajuraho in every person! For thousands of years this suppression went on and on; it has driven humanity mad. Mahatma Gandhi never read a single word of Sigmund Freud, and this could have been of great help to him. He must have been afraid. Nevertheless, he admitted that he still has sexual dreams and sexual fantasies at night.

But the logic of a suppressive person is completely different. If he had been a man of meditation, he would have meditated on this message, he would have learned something - but he began to repress even more. It is a vicious circle: you repress sex, your dreams become more sexual, then you repress more. You become harsher - you think you haven't suppressed enough.

He began to reduce the duration of sleep from seven hours to five, from five to four. He even became afraid to sleep because whenever you sleep, dreams come. And the dreams became more and more sexual as he grew weaker, as his body aged, as the energy of his youth faded.

People think that it is very difficult to repress sex when you are young; they are wrong, completely wrong. The real difficulty begins when you get old, because when you are young you have enough energy to repress, and when you become old that energy to repress is no longer there. Therefore, everything that you have suppressed begins to remind you of itself, begins to float to the surface.

The point of discipline is not control, the point of discipline is not suppression. This is a very unhealthy position. The meaning of discipline is in understanding, in meditation.

Rabbi Greenberg died and went to heaven. He met only three people there, reading in the dim light. One of them was the mad Jibhai - Morarjibhai Desai, who read "Playboy", the second was Ayatollah Khomeini - he read "Gallery", and the third was the Polish Pope who read "Genesis". And they all read it very reverently. He couldn't believe his own eyes. First of all, he couldn't believe that there were only three people in heaven, and he also couldn't believe that they were all reading Playboy, Gallery, Genesis with reverence - reading with such reverence as if they read the Gita, Koran or Bible.

He decided to see what hell was like. The rabbi descended into the domain of the devil and found himself in a large nightclub where a wide variety of music was played. There was an eight-piece Dixieland band, a thirty-piece swing band, and all the people were dancing.

Rabbi Greenberg ascended back to heaven and asked for an audience with God.

“I don’t understand this, Lord,” he said. “There are only three people in heaven, they all read, and they read things that they shouldn’t read, but they read it with such reverence.” I'm amazed, I'm surprised! Down in hell, everyone is dancing and having fun, and these three look so sad and so ugly. Why can't we have a little music and dancing in heaven?

The Lord answered:

“I can’t hire an orchestra just for these three fools!”

Suppression, control can only make you stupid. And remember: even if you go to heaven, you will smuggle back several old issues of Playboy, Gallery, Genesis, because here you did not have enough of them. They will certainly go with you. Here you have read the Gita, the Koran and the Bible, here you have suppressed. It is easy to suppress in a life of seventy or eighty years, but in heaven life lasts forever. How long can you suppress, how long can you sit on a volcano? Sooner or later it will certainly erupt.

Remember: useful discipline has nothing to do with control or suppression. Desiderata extremely significant when they say:

While following a useful discipline, be kind to yourself.

Meditate, meditate totally and put all your energy into it. And yet, be kind to yourself.

Well, these so-called religious people have never been kind to themselves. In fact, we call a person a saint only if he tortures himself, if he is a masochist. The more masochism, the greater he is as a saint. The more he tortures himself, the more followers worship him. It was by this criterion that we determined the truth of a saint.

I am condemned in India and outside India for the simple reason that I am not an ascetic, for the simple reason that I am not a masochist, that I do not torture myself and do not suggest that you torture yourself. I am neither a masochist nor a sadist, and religion has been sadomasochistic for centuries.

The saint tortures himself, teaches others to be like him, and creates a feeling of guilt in you if you cannot torture yourself - and no reasonable person is capable of torturing himself. That's why All reasonable people felt guilty. Only stupid people can torture themselves. That is why in the faces, in the eyes of your saints, you will see nothing but utter stupidity.

You can go all over India, see many saints, and you will be surprised: they have neither intelligence nor wit. They are not sharp, not like swords; their swords were completely rusty and covered with dust. They have lost all their sensitivity, all their awareness. They are fixed on one thing - torturing themselves more and more. And intelligence cannot allow this, so they have to suppress intelligence, they have to become stupid, they have to be almost dead! They don't teach you how to live, they teach you how to commit slow suicide. And this, to a greater or lesser extent, has been done by all religions. Therefore these so-called religious people cannot perceive me as a religious person, they cannot perceive me as a saint. But, in my opinion, to be a saint means to be whole, to be a healthy person.

“...Be kind to yourself.” I agree with Desiderates. Love yourself, respect yourself, be kind to yourself. If you don't treat yourself with love, you can't be loving at all. If you don't take care of yourself, you won't take care of anyone else; this is impossible.

I teach you to be truly selfish so that you can be altruistic. There is no contradiction between egoism and altruism: egoism is the source of altruism. But until now you have been told exactly the opposite, you have been taught the opposite: if you want to be altruistic, if you want to love others, then Not love yourself - essentially hate themselves. If you want to respect others, then don't respect yourself - humiliate yourself in every possible way, condemn yourself in every possible way.

And what came out of this training? Nobody loves anyone. A person who condemns himself cannot love anyone. If you cannot love even yourself - and you are the closest person to yourself - if your love cannot even reach the nearest point, it cannot reach the stars. You don't know how to love - you know how to pretend. And what humanity has become is a community of pretenders, hypocrites.

Please try to understand what I mean by selfishness. First you must love yourself, get to know yourself, become by ourselves. Then you will radiate love, understanding, tenderness, and care for others. True compassion grows from meditation. But meditation is a selfish thing, meditation means you just enjoy yourself and your solitude, forget about the whole world and just enjoy yourself. This is a selfish phenomenon, but out of this selfishness arises great altruism. And then you don't brag about it. You don't become selfish, you don't serve people, you don't make them feel obligated. You simply enjoy sharing your love, your joy.

You are a child of the Universe no less than the trees and stars...

IN Desiderata It says: “Don’t judge yourself - you are a child of the Universe. You are part of this beautiful Existence. This Existence needs you, otherwise you would not be here. And it needs you as you are, otherwise it would not have created you as you are. So don't try to be someone else."

If Existence needed another Jesus, it would create another Jesus. If it can create one, why can't it create millions? Just like we create cars on an assembly line... Millions of cars, identical cars, are continuously produced by the Ford plant; Every second the Ford plant produces a car. God could do it, Existence could do it. If Ford can do it, do you think God can't do it? The usual assembly line: only Jesus Christs or Gautama Buddhas. But then the world will be very ugly.

Just imagine the world of Jesus Christ... it will lose all its richness because it will lack diversity. And who will crucify Jesus? It will be very difficult! He will continue to carry his cross on his shoulders and will not find anyone to crucify him, because he will meet other Christs who carry their crosses - there is no one to crucify, no one to teach. To whom will he say: “Blessed are the meek”? They'll all say, “Shut up! We already know this. Surely the meek are blessed!”

Just imagine... all these Gautama Buddhas sitting under the trees. Who will feed them?

On the day when Gautama Buddha became enlightened, a beautiful girl named Sujata brought him sweets and food. In fact, the Buddha remembered these three people with great respect: the woman who raised him (his mother died immediately and his mother's sister gave him the breast) - he treated her with great respect; Sujata, because before he became enlightened she fed him, she brought him nutritious food - he fasted for many days and she fed him; and the man who gave him food, his last food before he died.

He said that these people were incredibly lucky, it was a blessing for them, because to give your breast to the Buddha, or to feed him just before enlightenment, or to give him food, the last farewell food, is service to Existence in a very subtle, invisible way. Because with every Buddha, with every enlightened person, with every awakened person, Existence begins to reach even greater heights. With every buddha it takes a leap.

But Existence never repeats anyone. If there are only Buddhas, then there will be no Sujata. Who will feed these buddhas, who will serve them? Who will follow them, who will listen to them? Who are they transforming? They will be extremely bored! They will have nothing to do, their life will be empty.

No, Existence needs everyone as they are. Never try to be anyone else. IN Desiderata It says: “Be yourself – because Existence needs you exactly as you are, you fit exactly as you are.” You see a message of great importance! IN Desiderata It says: “Accept yourself.”

You are yours! You are not strangers. You didn’t end up here by accident, you are really needed. Remember: the greatest need in life is to be needed, and if you can feel that the whole of Existence needs you, you will become incredibly joyful and cheerful, you will be “on”! You will have the most significant experience, you will feel ecstasy, if you can feel that the whole of Existence needs you, that you will be missed, that there will be a gap if you are not here. You Not superfluous, you Not unnecessary; you make a huge difference.

Therefore, love yourself. You are needed just as much as the trees, flowers, birds, sun, moon and stars. You should be here and you have right be who you are. Accept yourself for who you are, never feel guilty.

Religions have created a sense of guilt in you, and it is through this that they have exploited you. They create a feeling of guilt in you, and then you absolutely must go to the priest, you absolutely must go to church, to the temple to pray, because you feel guilty, sinful. They keep telling you that you are sinners. But why are you sinners, why does God keep creating sinners? If that's how it works, then it's his miscalculation!

Why did God create Adam and Eve the way he did? Why did he command them not to eat from the tree of knowledge? If he had not commanded them to do so, I do not think they would have found this tree of knowledge; they would not have been able to find him in the vast garden of Eden. By telling them, “Do not eat from the tree of knowledge,” he made them obsessed with this idea. After that it was very difficult for them not to try its fruits. God is responsible - no one else.

One man was walking along the road and suddenly felt an urgent need to poop. It happened that at that moment he was passing by a huge mansion, and, driven by his urgent need, he walked up to it and rang the doorbell. The maid came out to him, he told her about his predicament and asked if he could use the bathroom.

“Wait a minute, sir, I’ll ask madam,” said the maid.

Then she returned.

“Madam says you can use the bathroom, but under no circumstances should you press the fourth button!”

He was shown into a luxurious bathroom with gold fixtures and walls hung with carpets. With great relief, he pooped. Then, noticing the buttons on the wall, he pressed the first one - and a fountain of warm soapy water sprayed out, which washed his bottom clean. Fascinated, he pressed the second button - and cool, fragrant water poured out, rinsing her. In great delight, he pressed the third button - and a hand with a soft towel appeared, which gently blotted her and wiped her dry.

It was too much! He couldn't resist the temptation. He pressed the fourth button. Bang! Bang! Excruciating pain... He woke up in the hospital. The mistress of the house stood next to his bed.

“I told you, I warned you not to press the fourth button,” she said.

– W-what was that fourth button for? – he asked stammeringly in a weak voice.

“This,” she said, “is my tampon extractor!”

Drop all guilt. Otherwise, watch out for the tampon ejector!

And whether it is clear to you or not, the Universe is undoubtedly developing as it should.

This is the most perfect Universe. Don't try to improve it. Do you understand this beautiful message Desiderat?

Therefore, be at peace with God...

There is no need to worry about God, there is no need to seek him, there is no need to investigate him. Just relax, be at home in this Universe. And this is how they find God. It is found not by the seeker, not by the explorer, but by the one who feels at home, who is at peace and resting, who relaxes with Existence, who knows the beauty of complete acceptance.

Buddha used the word tathata– “suchness, acceptance.” The Buddha said again and again: “This is the way things are, and this is the way they should be. Don't create unnecessary problems for yourself by trying to improve it."

But that is exactly what your missionaries, your social reformers and your so-called politicians continue to do. They are all trying to improve the world, and all their efforts to improve it only make things worse; they create disorder in the world. If somehow these social reformers, these benefactors, could be restrained from their good works, the world could remain at peace, in harmony with God.

Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you imagine him to be.

It doesn't matter how you imagine God. Don't argue about it, it doesn't matter. You can imagine that he has a thousand arms. In fact, he has millions of hands, otherwise how can he create so many trees, so many people and so many stars? It will be too difficult with two hands. If you want to think of it as a trinity, fine, because in fact Existence can be understood as a trinity.

Even physicists will agree with you. The names they use will differ, but not that much. They call these three components electron, neutron and positron. No one has seen them, and no one will ever see them, so physicists cannot say that believing in the Christian trinity - God the Father, the Son Jesus and the Holy Spirit - is absurd, because no one has seen them. Who has seen electrons, neutrons, positrons? They are all Holy Spirits! And the physicist knows that no one will ever see them; all we see are the consequences. We do not see electrons, neutrons, positrons, but we see something that can be explained if we accept that they exist; otherwise, Existence becomes inexplicable. So all this does not matter: you can imagine God as a trinity, or as the Hindus imagine him: as a trimurti - a three-headed God.

Just the other day someone asked me:

– What do you say when you meet a three-headed monster?

Of course I will say:

- Hello! Hello! Hello!

And what do you imagine? It does not matter! "Hello" three times. You walk around and say, “Hi! Hello! Hello!" – to all three individuals.

IN Desiderata It is stated that what you imagine does not matter. These are all possible options. But if it helps you to be at peace with Existence, then that is good.

You will be surprised to know that Buddha defined truth as that which works. A strange definition, but, in my opinion, absolutely correct - what works. It doesn't matter whether it's true or false; if it works, then it's true!

You see a rope in the dark, think it's a snake, and run away. You huff and puff, you fall, and you have a mild heart attack. It is truth! At least it worked like a charm for you.

Buddha says: “Whatever works is truth; whatever helps is true; whatever leads you to greater understanding is truth.” And let all this be hypothetical. This is the meaning of the word hypothesis: “what helps you understand.”

IN Desiderata It says: “Don’t get involved in arguments about God, because it’s not necessary.” And Christians, Buddhists, Jains, Hindus and Muslims are constantly arguing like dogs, barking at each other, constantly clawing at each other's throats, trying to gnaw it, trying to prove that they are right.

A person who is constantly trying to prove that he is right, thereby, as it were, says: “I’m afraid that I’m wrong.” Somewhere deep inside he doubts and tries to convince others that he is right. Through others he tries to convince himself: “Yes, I am right,” and others try to do the same. Remember: Christians are not interested in Christ, just as Hindus are not interested in Krishna, and Buddhists are not interested in Buddha: they are interested in how to prove that they are right. But the problem is that there are many people who hold other views, so first you need to prove that these views are wrong, only then can you calm down. But it is impossible to prove anyone wrong. How can you prove someone else wrong if his hypothesis worked for him?

Mahavira has achieved the ultimate truth, peace - a peace that is beyond all understanding, a peace that transcends all understanding. Therefore, whatever his hypothesis may be, it does not matter; it's just a springboard. There is no need to argue - just look at Mahavira. He himself is proof enough.

Jesus returned home, and therefore it does not matter which road he returned by, whether it was the shortest road or not. There are people who like longer roads.

I had one friend, he died only a few days ago - a very beautiful person. When I traveled around India, he sometimes accompanied me. He loved to travel by passenger train. I told him:

- What nonsense! By plane we can fly from Bombay to Kolkata in one hour. Why waste forty-eight hours on a train? And this is if you travel by fast train.

And a passenger train in India... it’s like you’re going and going forever! If you travel around India by passenger trains, you will begin to believe in eternity. It really feels like an eternity or infinity!

But he said:

“You must come with me at least once.”

And I answered:

We took a passenger train from Jabalpur to Jaipur. We got there in four days. But my friend was right in his own way, preferring passenger trains... At every small station these trains stop, stand for hours, and you can get off and have tea. You can even go outside the station. You can even walk around the village and come back! It was a wonderful experience! And thanks to the fact that this man always traveled by passenger trains, he knew where, at which station, he could find the most delicious tea; where you can buy the most delicious food, where you can buy anything you want. He knew everything; and everyone knew him, because he traveled often and was familiar with everyone.

And he said:

- Look, almost the whole country knows me, and no one knows you! How can people recognize you if you only fly over them? They will never forgive you for this!

And I really never knew that there were so many beautiful stations, and so many beautiful trees, and so many beautiful people. He had so many friends. I understood what he meant. I enjoyed this trip.

So don't judge anyone, let them follow whatever they feel suits them. No two people are the same, so no one path, no one hypothesis is suitable for everyone.

That is why I am talking here about Jesus, about Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Dionysius and Heraclitus. I spoke about a variety of mystics. And people think I'm an eclectic - no, I'm not. I am simply introducing you to millions of paths to truth, because on each path I see the beauty that other paths lack. Each of them has its own beauty.

You will have to choose your own path - you will have to choose. There are millions of options, and it's good that you can choose.

When Ford built his first cars, they were all black, and he told customers, "You can have any color as long as it's black." Then what choice remains? "...As long as he's black."

It is good that Existence has so many flowers of different colors, different shapes, different sizes, with different scents. This makes Existence multidimensional.

“...Whatever you imagine it to be.” Desiderata they don't tell you anything about God, they just say, "Be at peace with Existence." Any hypothesis that helps you be at peace is good.

And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy bustle of life, keep peace in your soul.

The only way to honor God is to be a creator in whatever you create. You can create a garden, you can make a sculpture, you can paint, you can compose a song, you can play the guitar or the flute, or you can dance. Whatever contribution you can make, be a creator. To be a creative person is the only true prayer; all other prayers are just empty rituals. If God is a creator, then the only way to know God is to be creative. This is the only way to share something with him, to take part in his life, in his work, in his being.

Here my sannyasins learn only one prayer: to be creative. If you can act on stage, be an actor. If you can design clothes, be a clothing designer. If you can work with wood, work with wood. If you are a jeweler, be a jeweler.

...whatever your work and aspirations may be...

We usually call a creative person inspired (inspired). This is wrong - we should call it aspiring (aspired) person. Why? IN Desiderata instead of the word "inspiration" ( inspiration) the word “aspiration” was chosen ( aspiration). "Inspiration" means letting something in; when you inhale it is inspiration, when you exhale it is aspiration. "Inspiration" means letting something in; "aspiration" means sharing, giving. "Aspiration" means exactly the same thing as the word "education" ( education): extracting something - a flower from a seed, water from a well - turning potential into reality.

Because you have been told for thousands of years that inspiration is good, you continue to follow others. You are inspired by Christ and become a Christian imitator. You get inspired by Buddha and become a Buddhist, something false. Buddha is beautiful, Buddhist is ugly. Krishna had great beauty, but a Hindu is just a fanatic. Don't be inspired by anyone, because once you are inspired, you will only become a follower.

Be ignited by the fire of aspiration, the joy of creativity. Then you will know that in childbirth there is pain, but there is also great ecstasy, and through this ecstasy the pain of childbirth becomes sweet pain. Then even the thorns are beautiful, because they appear along with the roses. Then even the night is light because it is part of the day. Then darkness is beautiful, soft, because light cannot exist without it. Then everything is accepted, then nothing is rejected. In this complete acceptance one can rest peacefully in the center.

...in the noisy bustle of life, keep calm in your soul.

Then it becomes very easy to always be calm. If you are at peace with Existence, if you are at peace with yourself, then nothing can disturb you, nothing can confuse you. Then you remain centered, rooted, grounded in your being. Even in the market place, where there is noise and bustle, you remain clear.

But become a follower, become an imitator, and you will lose all the peace of your being because you will try to become someone else - who you are. never you won't be able to become. You can never succeed at being someone else. So you will continue to suffer, you will remain confused, you will remain split, you will remain schizophrenic. From madness you will move to more madness. Your life will become hell.

From the book The Tree of Life. Volume 1 author Alnashev Alexey

Chapter 4 THE BIRTH OF A CHILD Parents convey to the child the image of their life in this world. Baba Gulya, having mowed the sedge in one girth of the braid, equals me and asks, continuing our conversation: “As you see: what does the earth give to the seed when it sprouts and makes its way to the surface?”

From the book Crossroads, or the History of a Drop author Obraztsov Anatoly

Chapter 5 KNOWLEDGE OF A CHILD ABOUT THE WORLD OF THE FLESH Let's consider life using the example of a tree. Aunt Nailya carries river sand in the hem of her apron, lays it out on a scarf in front of me and begins to draw something on it, voicing her drawing: “This is the earth.” These are roots, trunk and branches. And this is

From the book Chronicles of Tao by Ming Dao Den

Chapter 7 A CHILD STUDIES THE WORLD AROUND What different worlds did the Old Men show me? Having finished with the hay, we again sit down at Aunt Naila’s scarf to gain strength and talk. “Shall we continue?” - Aunt Nailya asks me. - Yes. We settled on analyzing the division of the trunk into

From the book Training according to the Joseph Murphy system. The power of the subconscious to attract money author Bronstein Alexander

Chapter 8 THE CHILD IS THE GODDESS The child is the Creators in the flesh We return to the conversation we started, already when it gets dark. Near the scarf, where a tree is drawn on the sand, a fire is already burning, and Grandfather Kolya, Baba Sonya and Baba Anya are sitting around the fire. They are waiting for us and preparing dinner. Approaching them, we

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Chapter 9 A CHILD DETERMINES HIS LIFE PATH When a child shows his parents their life path In the morning, as soon as it gets light, I wake up. Baba Gulya, Aunt Nailya, Grandpa Kolya and Baba Sonya are already mowing the grass. I get up, wash myself at the spring and run to them. We hug, and Baba Gulya leads me

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Chapter 10 CHILD - VESHNIK How they broke through my defenses without a fight After breakfast in the meadow, the grandmothers go to shake the mown grass and collect dry hay into piles. And I collect food from the meadow table and wash dishes in the spring. Meanwhile, Grandpa Kolya is lighting a fire and waiting for me when I

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Chapter 11 RITE OF TRANSITION FROM A CHILD-GOD INTO A HUMAN From a child-god into a human After breakfast, Aunt Nailya sits down next to me and asks: “Son, what happens to a child at three years old?” “He makes the transition from a child-god into a human,” I say. in the words of the old people. - How

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Chapter 16 THE FLOWERING OF A TREE - matchmaking, a wedding and the adoption of the first child into a new family How I almost got married After lunch, we lounge in the shade to catch our breath from mowing, and Baba Gulya starts a song while lying down. Aunt Nailya and grandfather Kolya pick up and sing together in three

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CHAPTER 2 BEGINNING. THE GRAIN OF THE UNIVERSE...Infinity and Emptiness...It is in principle impossible to imagine, and an impressionable nature from such a “mirage” can be shocked. For a person, “Infinity” is the borders of something very, very far away. I mean the true one

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CHAPTER 5 THE BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE At one of the moments of Infinity, the Grain received a command - what we know from the phrase: “In the beginning was the Word...” Let it be the Life-Giving Word, the energy that gave impetus to the “germination” of the Grain. The “program” embedded in Zernyshka started working. IN

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CHAPTER 6 LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE. “7” And “3” The entire development of the Universe is subject to certain laws. Some manifestations of these laws are known to scientists (gravity, conservation of energy, etc.), but they completely lose sight of the fact that if you “move” along the Ray of Creation, these manifestations

Current page: 1 (book has 16 pages total) [available reading passage: 9 pages]

Neil Shubin
The Universe is inside us: what do rocks, planets and people have in common?

Dedicated to Michelle, Nathaniel and Hannah

Prologue

I spend a significant part of my time looking at the rocks under my feet, and therefore I have developed a certain view of life and the Universe. I look for answers to questions that interest me about the origin of living organisms in the sands of deserts or in Arctic ice. This may seem strange to some, but those of my colleagues who peer into the light of distant stars and galaxies, draw maps of the ocean floor, or study the surface of the barren planets of the solar system are doing approximately the same thing. What unites our work are some of the most amazing ideas ever conceived by humanity—ideas about how we and our entire world came to be.

It was these ideas that inspired me to create my first book, “Inner Fish.” 1
Rus. trans.: Shubin N. The Inner Fish: The History of the Human Body from Ancient Times to the Present Day. M.: Astrel: CORPUS, 2010. – Here and below are the translator's notes.

Every organ, every cell, every piece of DNA in our bodies bears traces of the three and a half billion years of life on Earth. This story has shaped the shape of our bodies, but clues to it can be found in the imprints of ancient worms on rocks, in the DNA of fish, and in the thick algae at the bottom of ponds.

As I thought about the first book, I realized that worms, fish, and algae point us to other, even deeper connections, going back billions of years to a time when no life existed on Earth. The birth of stars, the movement of celestial bodies and even the appearance of day and night have left traces within us.

Over the past 13.7 billion years, as a result of the Big Bang, the Universe arose, stars began to appear and disappear, and our planet was formed from cosmic matter. Since then, the Earth has tirelessly revolved around the Sun, and seas and continents have appeared and disappeared on it. Numerous discoveries of the last century have confirmed the multibillion-year history of the Earth, the immensity of space and the humble position of man on the tree of life. All this new knowledge can raise a legitimate question: is it really the task of scientists to make people feel like small, insignificant creatures in front of the infinity of space and time?

But aren't we discovering a stunningly beautiful truth by splitting tiny atoms and observing galaxies, studying rocks on the highest peaks and in the deepest ocean trenches, and examining the DNA of all living creatures today? Within each of us lives the deepest history of all things.

Chapter 1
And everything started spinning

From a bird's eye view, my partner and I might have seemed like two black grains of sand stuck high on a slope among rocks, ice and snow. Our long route was coming to an end, and we were returning to camp, set up on a ridge sandwiched between the two largest ice sheets on the planet. Beneath the clear northern sky lay an expanse from the drifting ice of the Arctic in the east to the vast ice sheets of Greenland in the west. After a productive day and a long walk, we felt on top of the world when we saw this majestic sight.

However, suddenly the state of bliss came to an end, and all because the ground under my feet changed. We were crossing a strip of bedrock, and the brown sandstone gave way to a patch of pink limestone, which we knew was a sure sign that fossils might be found nearby. We had been looking at the boulders for several minutes when I noticed an unusual reflection coming from one of the melon-sized stones. My experience in the field taught me to listen to my inner voice. We came to Greenland to hunt for small fossils, so I got used to looking at rocks through a magnifying glass. It was a glittering white speck no larger than a sesame seed. I looked at the stone for a good five minutes, and then handed the find to Farish, my companion, to hear his authoritative opinion.

Farish froze, peering at the grain, and then looked at me with delight and amazement. Pulling off his gloves, he threw them high, about five meters, and squeezed me tightly in his arms.

Such an explosion of emotions distracted me from the absurdity of the situation: the discovery of a tooth the size of a grain of sand caused great delight! But we found what we had been looking for for three years, spending a lot of money, something that had repeatedly sprained ligaments in our legs: the missing link between reptiles and mammals, about two hundred million years old. Of course, our project was not limited to finding a single trophy. This little tooth is just one of the threads that connects us with antiquity. The Greenland rocks contain part of the forces that once shaped our bodies, our planet and even our Universe.

Finding connections with this ancient world is like discovering the original design in an optical illusion. We see people, stones and stars every day. But train your eyes - and familiar things will appear in front of you from an unusual perspective. If you learn to look at the world, then objects and stars will become for you a window into the past - so huge that it is almost beyond comprehension. In our common distant past, terrible disasters occurred, and they could not help but affect living beings.

How can a huge world be reflected in a small tooth or even in a human body?

I'll start by telling you how my colleagues and I first came to that mountain range in Greenland.

Imagine a valley stretching as far as the eye can see. And you're looking for fossils here the size of the period at the end of a sentence. The fossils and the vast valley are not comparable in size, but any valley will seem tiny in comparison with the surface of the Earth. Learning to look for traces of ancient life means learning to look at stones not as fixed objects, but as dynamic entities, often with an eventful history. This applies to our entire world and to our bodies, which are a “snapshot” capturing a specific moment in time.

Over the past century and a half, the tactics for opening sites for fossil hunting have changed little. In principle, there is nothing complicated here: we should find an area where stones of the age we are interested in lie on the surface, and those that are most likely to contain fossils. The less you have to dig, the better. This approach, which I described in my book Inner Fish, allowed me and my colleagues in 2004 to discover the remains of fish preparing to come to land.

As a student in the early 1980s, I joined a group that was developing new methods for finding fossils. Our task was to find the earliest relatives of mammals. Scientists found fossils of small shrew-like animals and their reptile relatives, but by the mid-1980s they had reached a dead end. The problem is best described by the famous joke: “For every missing link found, two new gaps are created in the fossil record.” My colleagues contributed to the creation of new gaps and were forced to fill them, including looking for rocks that were about two hundred million years old.

The discovery of new fossil sites was facilitated by economic and political developments: in search of sources of oil, gas and other minerals, many states stimulated the creation of geological maps. Therefore, almost any geological library has journal articles, reports and - which we always really count on! – maps of territories, regions and countries with a detailed description of the age, structure and mineral composition of rocks exposed on the surface. The challenge is to find the right card.

Professor Farish A. Jenkins, Jr. led the research group at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. Finding fossils is his bread and butter, or rather that of himself and his team, and they started their search in the library. Farish's colleagues from another laboratory, Chuck Schaff and Bill Eimeral, played a key role in this research. They used their extensive experience in geology to point out potential fossil sites and, importantly, trained themselves to spot small fossils on the ground. Chuck and Bill's work together often looked like a long, friendly discussion: one put forward a new hypothesis, and the other eagerly tried to refute it. If the hypothesis managed to survive, they brought it to the court of Farish, with his logic and scientific sense, for a final decision.

One day in 1986, during such a discussion, Bill saw on Chuck's desk a copy of the Shell reference book on Permian and Triassic sediments. Flipping through the pages, Bill came across a map of Greenland with a small shaded area of ​​Triassic sediments on the east coast, lying at 72 degrees north latitude, approximately the latitude of the northernmost cape of Alaska. After studying the map, Bill stated that this was the place where the search should begin. The usual discussion ensued: Chuck argued that the rocks here were not the same, and Bill objected to him.

A happy accident allowed the dispute to end right there, at the bookshelf. A few weeks earlier, Chuck had been rummaging through the library trash and pulled out a reprint of the article “A Review of the Triassic Stratigraphy of Scoresby Land and Jameson Land in East Greenland,” written by Danish geologists in the 70s. Few people could then imagine that this work, miraculously saved from waste paper, would determine our lives for ten years to come. The discussion ended literally the minute Bill and Chuck looked at the cards in the article.

The graduate student's room was just down the hall, and as often happened, I stopped by to see Chuck at the end of the day. Bill was spinning around right there, and it was clear that they had just been arguing as usual. Bill handed me a reprint of the article. This was exactly what we were looking for. On the east coast of Greenland, opposite Iceland, there were deposits containing the remains of early mammals, dinosaurs and other treasures.

The cards looked unusual, even frightening. The east coast of Greenland is remote and mountainous. The names of the places are associated with the names of travelers of the past: Jameson Land, Scoresby Land, Wegener Peninsula. And some of them, as I reliably knew, died there.

Fortunately, the chores fell on the shoulders of Farish, Bill and Chuck. With a combined sixty years of field work behind them, they have accumulated a wealth of knowledge about conducting expeditions in a wide variety of conditions. But what experience could prepare us for the journey ahead? An experienced expedition leader once told me: nothing compares to your first trip to the Arctic.

Greenland team (clockwise from top left photo): Farish, military simplicity of uniform; Chuck, an experienced fossil hunter; Bill, who largely determines the success of the expedition; I, who made a lot of mistakes in that first year (just look at my hat).

During my first expedition to Greenland, I learned a lot, which was useful to me eleven years later when I started my own expedition to the Arctic. That first time I took with me to the land of slush, ice and eternal day leaky leather boots, a small old tent and a giant lantern, and in general I made so many mistakes that I smiled only when I repeated the motto I had invented: “Never do anything.” do it for the first time."

The most unpleasant episode of that expedition was associated with the choice of a place for camp: the decision had to be made quickly, right when we were inspecting the area from a helicopter. While the engine is running, the money, figuratively speaking, goes down the drain: the cost of renting a helicopter in the Arctic for an hour can reach three thousand dollars. With a paleontological expedition budget more geared toward a beat-up pickup truck than a Bell 212 helicopter, that means there's not a minute to waste. Finding ourselves over a place that, when studying the maps in the laboratory, seemed suitable for us to park, we quickly noted the elements that were important to us. There are a lot of them. You need a dry, flat area, located close to a water source, but at some distance from the sea to avoid encounters with polar bears. The site should be sheltered from the wind and located close to the rock outcrops that we are going to explore.

We had a good idea of ​​the general layout of the area, having studied maps and aerial photographs, and so we found a wonderful little patch of tundra in the center of a wide valley. There were small channels here from which water could be taken. The place was dry and level, so we could easily set up our tents. In addition, from here there was a magnificent view of the ridge of snow-capped mountains and the glacier at the eastern end of the valley. But we soon realized our main mistake: there were no necessary rocks within walking distance.

After the camp was set up, we went out every day in search of stones. We climbed to the highest points of the area around the camp and tried to see through binoculars at least one of those rocky outcrops that literally caught our eye on the maps in the article that Bill and Chuck found. We were also guided by the fact that the stones - red sandstone - should have a characteristic color.

In search of red rocks, we left camp in pairs: Chuck and Farish climbed the hills to look for red rocks to the south, while Bill and I tried to see what was to the north. On the third day, both teams returned with the same news. About ten kilometers to the northeast a narrow reddish strip was visible. We spent the rest of the week discussing this exit and looking at it through binoculars. Sometimes, in the right light, it appeared to be a series of ridges, ideal for finding fossils.

It was decided that Bill and I would go to the stones. Since I had no idea what roads were like in the Arctic, I chose the wrong boots, and the trek turned out to be an ordeal: first we crossed fields of cobblestones, then small glaciers... but mostly we walked on mud. The liquid clay squelched obscenely every time we pulled our leg out of it. We left no traces.

For three days we searched for the road, but in the end we were able to find a reliable path to the desired stones. After a four-hour trek, the reddish strip visible from the camp through binoculars turned into a series of rocks, ridges and hills, consisting of the very stones we were looking for. If we're lucky, there might be fossils on the surface.

Now the task was to return here as quickly as possible with Farish and Chuck, reducing the transition time and saving maximum time for searching for fossils. When we returned as a team, Bill and I felt so proud, as if we were showing our guests a new home. Farish and Chuck, tired from the trek but excited by the anticipation of the search, did not even start the usual discussion. They methodically scanned the soil with their gaze.

Bill and I headed to a ridge about a kilometer away to see what awaited us further north. After a break, Bill began to look around in search of something interesting: our colleagues, bears or any other manifestations of life. Finally he said, “Chuck is down.” Taking out the binoculars, I actually saw Chuck crawling on all fours. To a paleontologist, this means only one thing: fossils.

We quickly walked there. Chuck actually found a piece of bone. However, our one-way hike lasted four hours, and now we were forced to return. Farish, Bill, Chuck and I were stretched out in a line about ten meters apart from each other. About five hundred meters later I saw something on the ground. This “something” shone with a familiar shine. Kneeling down as Chuck had done an hour ago, I saw it in all its glory: a wonderful piece of bone the size of a fist. There were other bones on the left, and more and more on the right. I called out to Farish, Bill and Chuck.

There was no answer. I looked around and realized why: they were also on all fours. We found ourselves in a field strewn with broken bones.

At the end of the summer we returned to the laboratory with boxes of fossils, which Bill began to assemble like a three-dimensional puzzle.

They were the bones of a creature about six meters long, with a row of flat, leaf-shaped teeth, a long neck and a small head. Judging by the anatomy of the limbs, it was a dinosaur, although not the largest.

Dinosaurs of this type, prosauropods, occupy an important place among paleontological finds in North America. In the eastern part of the continent, dinosaurs used to be found along rivers, highways and railways, that is, in places where rocks end up on the surface. The famous paleontologist Richard Swann Lull (1867–1957) of Yale University discovered the prosauropod in the quarries of Manchester, Connecticut. True, the stone block contained only the back part of the animal’s body. The saddened scientist learned that the block with the front section was included in the support of the bridge in South Manchester. Lull described only the back of the dinosaur. Only when the bridge was dismantled in 1969 were the remaining fragments also freed. Who knows what fossils are hidden in the depths of Manhattan? After all, the famous brown houses on the island are built from the same stones.

The hills of Greenland are formed by wide stone steps that not only tear up your boots, but can also tell you a lot about the origin of the stones. Hard layers of sandstone, almost as strong as concrete, emerge from beneath softer, brittle layers. Almost the same steps exist in the south: layers of sandstone, silt and shale stretch from North Carolina and Connecticut all the way to Greenland. These layers contain characteristic faults filled with sedimentary rocks. They indicate the location of ancient lakes in deep valleys that arose when the earth's crust cracked. The arrangement of ancient faults, volcanoes and lake sediments in these layers is almost the same as in the lakes of the modern East African Rift Valley (Victoria and Malawi): movement in the bowels of the Earth led to the splitting of areas of the surface, and rivers and lakes appeared in the resulting gaps. In the past, such rift chasms stretched along the coast of North America.

In search of fossils, we followed the “correct” rock formations (highlighted in black). Successful searches in Connecticut and Nova Scotia led us to Greenland.

Our plan from the beginning was to search along these cracks. Knowing that fossils of dinosaurs and small creatures close to mammals can be found in the rocks of eastern North America allowed us to appreciate the significance of that reprint of a geological paper that Chuck discovered. This in turn led us to northern Greenland. Then, already in Greenland, we continued to follow the same thread for finds, like pigeons mincing for crumbs of bread. The work took three years, but the clues we found in the redflowers eventually led Farish and me to that icy ridge.

From the top of the ridge our tents looked tiny. The wind was rustling overhead, but the ledge of pink limestone on which Farish and I were sitting provided shelter, so we could easily see the find. Farish's jubilation confirmed my suspicion that the white speck on the stone was indeed a mammal tooth. Three tubercles and two roots: this is exactly how it should look.

Encouraged by the find, we expanded our search to East Greenland and found other mammal remains in subsequent years. It was a small, shrew-like animal half the size of a house mouse. It may not have been an amazing skeleton that deserved a special place in the museum, but its value lay elsewhere.

This was the skeleton of one of the earliest fossil creatures with our type of teeth: their cutting surface is formed by tubercles that meet at the junction of the upper and lower teeth, and the row is divided into incisors, canines and molars. The animal's ear also resembles ours and contains small bones that connect the eardrum to the inner ear.

The shape of its skull, shoulders and limbs is also like that of mammals. It is likely that the animal had fur and other mammalian characteristics, such as mammary glands. When we chew, hear high-pitched sounds, or move our hands, we use parts of the skeleton that can be traced back to primates and other mammals back to the original structures of these small creatures that lived two hundred million years ago.

Stones also connect us with the past. Cracks in the earth - like the ones that led us to the fossilized remains of mammals in Greenland - have left their mark on our bodies. Greenland rocks are one page in a huge library that contains the history of our world. Before this little tooth appeared, the world had existed for billions of years, and two hundred million years have passed since its appearance. During this time, oceans appeared and disappeared on Earth, mountains rose and collapsed, and asteroids fell on Earth as it made its way through the solar system. Rock layers record changes in climate, atmosphere and crust over millions of years. Change is the normal order of things: bodies grow and die, species appear and disappear, every element and sign of our planet and Galaxy is subject to both sudden transformations and gradual changes.

Stones and bodies are “time capsules”, bearing the imprint of the great events that formed them. The molecules that make up our bodies arose as a result of cosmic events at the dawn of the solar system. Changes in the Earth's atmosphere have shaped our cells and our entire metabolism. Changes in the planet's orbit, the appearance of mountains and other revolutionary changes on the Earth itself - all this was reflected in our bodies, in our brains and in our perception of the world around us.

Like the life and history of our bodies, this book is structured along a timeline. Our story begins approximately 13.7 billion years ago, when the Big Bang created the Universe. Then we'll explore the history of our humble corner of the Universe and see what consequences the formation of the solar system, Earth and Moon had on our organs, cells and the genes they contain.

If each part reflects the whole to which it belongs, then the big can be seen in the small. Our body, with a certain degree of conditionality, is able to confirm this truth. To obtain a general map of the state of the body, it is examined in parts, turning to different sciences. Thus, reflexology provides information by studying the feet, palmistry - by examining the palms, and iridology - by studying the iris of the eyes.

Sacred body

Relationships in the human body have been of interest to spiritually awakened people for a long time. Renaissance artists, following the Egyptians, used a scheme of 18 proportions, dividing the body from head to toe into nine squares. The starting points for drawing up proportions were measurements of arm span, upper body length and overall height. This purely mathematical approach to depicting the universe within us was captured in images of the beautiful and sacred. It was constantly reproduced in the sacred art and architecture of unrelated civilizations.

As a sanctuary, the temple was built in such a way as to embody the body of the spirit, the outer shell for the ineffable. The analogy here is obvious. the human body and the temple body express one life through the universal language of sacred measure. You can often hear the expression “The body is the temple of the spirit,” but it is misinterpreted if these words mean that the body is empty and awaits filling, while the body and spirit are already one and cannot be separated. Spirit and matter have already been united in divine marriage in every cell of the body. The body is the densest expression of the mind, and the mind is all the subtlest manifestations of the body; and at the basis of this whole world, from the densest to the subtlest, lies one substance. Christian churches, Hindu temples and Buddhist stupas all embody a sacred relationship expressed through architectural form.

The human body as a microcosm has been a subject of universal interest since ancient times. The Sanskrit text Shiva Samhita describes the body as a symbolic landscape showing that the entire universe is within us. In chapter 11, verses 1-4, we see how the body takes on a cosmic nature: “In this body, Mount Meru, that is, the spinal column, is surrounded by seven islands; there are rivers, seas, mountains, fields; and the home team too. There are seers and sages here; as well as all the stars and planets. Here are holy places of pilgrimage, altars; and the main deities of the altars. The sun and moon, the forces of creation and destruction also move here. Ether, air, water and earth are also there. All beings that live in the three worlds can be found in this body; surrounding Mount Meru, they are busy with their own affairs.” The whole body was seen as a symbolic representation of a greater reality. The connection between parts and the whole expresses the eternal connection between unity and division, between one and many. The interdependence within the body reflects the interdependence within nature itself.

Each person is unique; each of us has enormous potential to realize ourselves and our capabilities to achieve everything we want. Through your own experience, living it in its entirety, and not from books or teaching aids, you find yourself, revealing the full strength and power of your potential and capabilities. You can be nobody, you can fit into the framework and parameters set by society, or you can create yourself anew, gain complete independence and freedom from other people’s opinions, judgments and any obligations. The choice is yours. .

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